Page 7 of Thin Ice

“Are you into someone else?”

My pulse spikes like it did when Noah said he “trusts me” before I stormed out.

“No.” I laugh. “God, no. I would never cheat on Noah.”

“I’m not saying you would; I’m just asking questions since you won’t give me information outright. You may have looser lips when drunk, but you’re still a tough cookie to crack.”

“I’ve never been good at talking about my feelings.”

She snorts. “You don’t say?”

I remember when we first met, she said I was harder to crack than a bank vault code, but I’ve always been protective of my feelings until someone gets to know me.

Noah was the first and only person I ever felt comfortable enough to be myself with from the jump. But like many things in our relationship, that’s changed, too. I can’t even remember the last time we talked, truly talked, like we did in college—staying up all night, whispering our dreams and secrets until the sun peeked over the horizon.

My heart aches, and I swallow the lump in my throat, willing myself not to cry. I will not become a crying drunk at the age of twenty-eight.

Stevie holds my hand. “I know Noah’s having a hard time after the game last week and that you’re worried about him. But has more been going on that you haven’t told me?”

“Yes.” The answer slips out.

“You can tell me, Quinn. I promise I won’t say a word, not even to Lucas.”

“I know you won’t.” I pull my hands away from hers and tuck my hair behind my ears. “It’s just hard for me to say out loud. It’s one thing to tell my therapist about my failing marriage, but it’s another to admit it to a friend.”

Stevie takes in my words before she asks, “Why is that?”

I look down at the table, head spinning again with every thought and feeling coursing through my body along with the drinks and fading adrenaline from dancing. “Because then it’s real.”

My voice cracks, and thankfully, Stevie doesn’t take me in a hug, probably understanding that if she did, I would start crying.

“Oh, Quinn, are things really that bad?”

I shrug, waiting until my voice calms to answer. “If you ask him, I don’t think he’d have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Given what you told me, the man sounds oblivious to what’s in front of him.”

“You could say that. But to be fair, I’ve not talked to him about it, about us. Unless you count my outburst before I came here.”

“What happened?”

I relay word for word what Noah said and what I told him before I stormed out, my admission that he’s been too busy for me. Stevie listens, acting appropriately annoyed and angry at the right times, just like any good girlfriend would.

“And he didn’t come after you?” she asks.

“He might have tried, but I was out of the house before I could give him the option, and I haven’t looked at my phone.”

“Fuck, Quinn. How long have you felt like that?”

It’s a weird question for me and one that my therapist has asked me before. “Longer than I care to admit.”

“So this isn’t something that’s only been going on for the season?”

I shake my head, wishing that were true. I’d give anything for it to be, because that would mean that with the season now over, everything goes back to the way it was before. But “before” isn’t just before this season or the last.

It’s before Noah left college for the NHL. Before I took the job as the team photographer for the Seattle Stormbreakers. Before my husband became the man he is now, one who eats, sleeps, and breathes hockey. A man who doesn’t seem to know who he is without winning, without being the best.

“I wish you would have told me how you’ve been feeling sooner,” Stevie says.